Editor’s Note: A frequent source of grousing among those newer-to-the-profession academic librarians is that the “impending shortage of librarians” they heard so much about is just a myth. The shortage, no doubt, is predicated on the expectations that many senior members of the profession would soon be retiring. Someone who has closely studied employment and retirement trends among academic librarians over the years is Stanley Wilder, Associate Dean for Information Management Services at the University of Rochester River Campus Libraries. In this guest post Wilder shares some of his latest findings on how the economic downturn is likely to impact academic librarian retirement trends.

Can academic librarians afford to retire in the Bush recession? Already in April of 2008, the Wall Street Journal noted that declines in home values and the stock market were driving many to delay their retirements. This fall’s calamitous drop in home values and investment portfolios can only have reinforced this trend, and my informal canvass of academic library colleagues leads me to suspect that we are delaying our retirements along with everyone else.

Retirement is an unusually resilient cultural behavior, and largely impervious to routine economic fluctuations. The ARL demographic data are a case in point: the portion of the population aged 65 and older has been remarkably stable over the past 22 years (at about 3%), despite recessions in the early 1990s and early 2000s. The stability of this group is all the more remarkable in a population that has otherwise swung dramatically from young to old.

But the Bush recession is clearly not a routine economic fluctuation. What would delayed retirement mean to academic librarianship? The first to go would be the projections of the age profile of U.S. ARL librarians developed in conjunction with my two reports for ARL, which would become obsolete should retirement behavior change significantly. Next, it should be said that delayed retirements would not affect all librarians equally. For example, ARL directors may have already begun to delay: in 2000, 2% were 65 and over, jumping to 9% in 2005. In functional areas of the academic library, catalogers were not far behind at 7% but the impact is negligible on IT professionals, the youngest job category in the ARL data. And racial and ethnic sub-groups within the profession are effected differently. Delayed retirement would have less impact on African American librarians, an unusually young population, but Asian librarians are significantly high with 9% in the 65 and over category.

I have been saying that the anticipated shortage of librarians is unlikely, but a bad economy with delayed retirements would make it harder still to imagine generalized labor shortages in our profession. We are far more likely to see large applicant pools chasing a reduced number of openings. I suspect they already have. Finally it should be obvious that while retirements can be delayed, they cannot be foregone altogether, meaning that the inevitable youth movement may be more dramatic, if somewhat later than anticipated.

None of this speculation matters if academic librarians do not, in fact, delay their retirements. Until we have data to tell us what is actually happening, I would love for ACRLog readers to comment on trends they see in their own libraries or in their region. Have you heard of senior librarians planning to delay their retirements? Do libraries find themselves newly unable to fill vacancies, and has there has been a recent change in the quality and quantity of applicants for those positions they are able to post? Share your observations.

Many thanks to Stanley Wilder for sharing his observations on retirement trends in this contributed guest post!

The latest edition of Peter Suber’s Open Access Newsletter includes a roundup of great news from 2008. There’s so much good news to report that he must say up front that he’s been selective, left out some things, and organized what he has into nine categories. And it is a lot to read. But it is so inspiring! It’s just what I needed to feel hopeful for 2009, that the momentum will carry forward.

Several of the items that were news to me were really surprising as well. Top among the surprises was this paragraph under heading 8, Books:

There were new OA textbook publishing initiatives from Flat World Knowledge, the Open University of Israel, and the Community College Open Textbook Project.  Florida became the first state in the US to approve an OA textbook program for use in its public schools.  The MakeTextbooksAffordable campaign released the Open Textbooks Statement to Make Textbooks Affordable, with signatures of 1,000+ professors from 300+ colleges in all 50 states.  StudentPIRGs launched a sign-on “Statement of Intent” for faculty to show their support for OA textbooks.  It also published a report recommending OA textbooks and criticizing TA digital textbooks for high prices, hobbling DRM, printing restrictions, and automatic expiration.

Having been a graduate student for the last 2 1/2 years and having used quite a few analog and digital textbooks, I see this industry as *way, way behind the curve* unable to take serious advantage of the digital networked environment. And I’ve heard that the negotiations with publishers to offer their texts in more innovative and more useful ways often fall flat if the publisher can’t be assured of making more money from the new model than he already makes from his existing strategy. Talk about innovator’s dilemma. This sets the stage perfectly for the upstarts who are willing to try new things because they don’t already have preconceived ideas about what they *ought* to be making right now from their existing customers. Have none of these folks read Christensen’s book, Innovator’s Dilemma? Their industry is positioned classically as the losing trajectory in the chart to the left. It shows how new technologies at first fail miserably to meet the needs of a firm’s current customers. Though their performance qualities fall so far below what current customers expect even at the low end of the market, they eventually improve through the process of sustaining innovation until they “break through” into the up-scale markets, directly competing with established firms for the same customers. Christensen documents this pattern in industry after industry. Publishing in general is following the pattern — like a puppy dog. Sad to see, but it’s frustrating as well.

Four thought-provoking links from the worlds of disaster tech, multicore, bioengineering, and 17th century French nobility.

1. Techies: Volunteering to Save the World - article on NGO work being the new black for technology. In particular, this caught my eye: "Earlier this year, IBM launched a program called Corporate Service Corps to send 100 employees to Romania, Turkey, Vietnam, the Philippines, Ghana and Tanzania to work on projects that combine economic development and IT. And the response was impressive: More than 5,000 employees applied to participate."
2. Laurence Livermore Lab releases Stack Trace Analysis Tool - debugging tool for code running over 20k processors. We need new tools like this to handle the complexity thrown up by a multicore world.
3. Spinning Silkworm Cocoons into Biosensors - interesting article in MIT Technology Review about bioengineer Fiorenzo Omenetto who is using silk to build optical devices that can be used as sensors in the body. "In the devices that ­Omenetto and Kaplan are developing, proteins embedded in the optical material efficiently bind to a target such as oxygen or a bacterial protein; when they do, the light transmitted by the sensor changes color."
4. La Rochefoucauld Quotes - lots of thought-provoking quotes. For example, on the freemium business model: "What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one." On Twitter: "As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing." On social network sites: "However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship." On Google/Microsoft/Apple/[insert big company here]: "There are heroes in evil as well as in good."

The start of the New Year is a time for planning new ventures, getting organized, and of course creating resolutions and goals for the coming year. One area of my life which I hope to improve upon, streamline, and make more effective, is the realm of social media. New social media applications are amazing communication and networking tools, but can be tough to keep up with. The following are ten goals I’ve laid out for myself for the New Year which you may also find helpful.

1. Lose Weight – Slim down your daily routine by unsubscribing to some of those less-than-helpful RSS feeds in your news reader. We all have these – the news outlets which used to be gold mines of inspiration but have since lost their direction, or the plucky new blogs whose authors now mainly issue apologies for not posting. Take a look at who you’re following on Twitter and unsubscribe to the people who do nothing but self-promote, whine, or otherwise irritate you as you scan for relevant tweets from your core group of friends.
2. Get in Shape – Shape up the virtual you by updating your profile for the New Year. Have you changed jobs? Achieved any goals personally or at work? Be sure to list these on your LinkedIn, Facebook, and other profiles. And upload a new photo to your social networks which better represents how you want to be viewed for this next year, whether that’s a recent pic, your mug from the high school yearbook, a baby photo, or an anime avatar.
3. Make New Friends! – Kick off the new year by doing a little bit of online networking - making new connections is always fun and you never know where it may lead. Many social networks make it easy on you by providing suggestions of “people you may know”. Browse through these recommendations, conduct a search for your professional field or interest area, ie. “librarian”, “writer”, books”, or opt-in to connect the social network to your email address book to search for your existing friends in that community.
4. Simplify Your Life – Sign up with some personal syndication services and save time by posting in one place and publishing to many. Through websites like Ping.fm, you can type in status updates or “tweets” which you can opt to have posted to your profiles on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and many other social networks automatically. For media such as photos, audio files, and video, check out Pixelpipe which will simultaneously post your uploaded media to Flickr, Facebook, Shutterfly, Twitter, PhotoBucket, and several others including your blog.
5. Create Good Habits – Social media tools are easy to use but tough to master, they take steady cultivation and commitment. Determine how much time you have to spend in this area and then integrate that into your weekly routine – decide to spend 30 minutes every Friday afternoon on Facebook or other social network, carve out 25 minutes each morning over coffee to read the blogs you’ve subscribed to in your news reader, set aside the third Tuesday of each month to upload photos to Flickr, etc.
6. Get Organized – Many of us have multiple email accounts, wikis and websites we’ve created, social networks we belong to, and web destinations we visit daily. Keep yourself sane by organizing all of these links in a start page such as Protopage, Netvibes, or iGoogle instead of having to recall URLs on a regular basis. You can make your start page your default home page on your browser and also feed in other useful personal information which will greet you each time you open it such as personal calendar schedules, Netflix queues, delicious bookmarks, etc.
7. Present the “New You” – Nearly every social site has a place for you to post a brief bio summarizing yourself in 2-3 sentences - a digital elevator pitch about who you are, what you do, and how you’re great at it. These can be tough to come up with off-the-cuff and for this reason you’ll often see these sections left blank or with clearly outdated information. Sit down and think about the best two or three things that you do and make a list of your accomplishments in these areas. Think about how to present these endeavors in the best light and use that to craft an impressive description of yourself which you can post to all of your social networks.
8. Take a Chance – Use the momentum of the New Year to try something new. Start that new blog you’ve been nagging yourself about for the past 6 months; give online publishing a shot by starting an open access journal; join a social network you’ve been both intimidated and intrigued by; give Twitter a go. Now’s the time to jump in, before the regular routine of the year sets in.
9. Ask for Help – Many of us spend loads of time making valuable connections on social networking sites and then forget to tap into our pool of resources when we need help. Reach out to your connections this year when you’re beta testing your new website, when you need a second set of eyes for an article you’re writing, or to ask for professional recommendations on sites such as LinkedIn, etc.
10. Treat Yourself - Reward yourself for all of your hard work. If you’ve just uploaded all of your photos to Flickr, treat yourself to some fun cards or stickers on Moo.com, or create a music video from your photos on Animoto. If you’ve just spent the afternoon blogging, spend 30 minutes laughing at LOLCats or reading celebrity gossip on Gawker.

Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer presents a Practical Guide To Content Tagging In Social Bookmarking in which he provides tips to stay organized and effectively categorize your favorites. Using Delicious as his primary example, Falls offers the following recommendations:

• Keep It Simple
• Keep It The Same
• Periodically Review
• Don’t Bookmark Everything

Be sure to check out the full article for his explanations as well as his 5 Delicious tricks.

via Social Media

Ah yes, it's that time again to be making plane and hotel reservations for Computers in Libraries.  I'll be there, presenting a few times and absorbing everybody else's genius the rest of the time.  Since I was reminded of its date proximity by someone else, I thought I'd pass along the reminder to others. 

Take a look at the official conference website and also the conference wiki.  Add yourself to the wiki if you're blogging, and add any hotel, bar, and other local info if you have it. 

Anybody looking to share a room at the conference?  These rooms are crazy expensive (darn it D.C.!) and I would happily split the cost with someone else.

In December, our Web Team here at the San Jose Public Library had the pleasure of being trained on administering Drupal by Greg Knaddison of Growing Venture Solutions.  We had considered several different companies and independent consultants, and decided on GVS because of their expertise and reasonable pricing (always a rare combination).  Greg also showed immense patience as we muddled through a complex, confusing, and brain-exploding contract process.  GVS is based in Colorado, but as you can tell by their trip out to (at that time) sunny California, they do travel to do outside training.

We had three days of completely hands-on training, going through Drupal basics and ending up creating our own complex pages, forms, drawing data from multiple sources.  Greg was an excellent trainer and the training was well-organized. Greg is extremely knowledgable about every aspect of Drupal. As one of the Drupal community's most active members, Greg (aka greggles) has an incredible range of information immediately at his disposal about the system's capabilities and processes. The training was extremely flexible - Greg let us stop and ask questions whenever we wanted, pause for hands-on work, and breeze through issues of less interest to us. Greg is a very friendly trainer, approachable, easy to work with, and amazingly knowledgable.

I would recommend him for any institution seeking training on any aspect of Drupal. Though we had three days of training, I wish we had five instead so that we could have gone more in depth into each topic and access Greg's wealth of knowledge!  We're looking for long-term support for Drupal now, and eyeing GVS seriously.  I find it so wonderful that there is a market to sustain companies that support open source applications.  It says a lot about how far the web has come so quickly, philosophically.  And thanks again Greg!

Anne-Marie Deitering has a great post over at Infofetishist about the historical-hoax-as-pedagogy story that popped up in December. A professor at George Mason taught a course on historical hoaxes and had students create a hoax and spread it virally using social networking. It was so successful it fooled a lot of historians and got written up in USA Today before the spoof was revealed. According to the course website, “The purpose of this hoax was to spend time thinking about how easily information takes on a life of its own online, ethics in the historical profession, and the role of digital media in popular culture.”

Some people felt it was a great assignment for these reasons:

–It used social media for higher-order educational ends
–It involved students in original authorship with an audience beyond one teacher
–It asked students to be creative with their research
–It taught students to think critically about sources
–It was a lot more fun for the students than traditional research
–It got a lot of press and demonstrated the power of social networks to spread information

Others, including Dietering, were bothered by it. Here are some of those reasons:

–Putting false information on Wikipedia is vandalism and vandalism is wrong
–Deliberately creating an elaborate hoax violates established trust networks; this project gave the whole idea of trust among historians a big Bronx cheer
–It took an easy approach to inculcating skepticism. It’s not that hard to feel superior when looking at a hoax site. It’s harder (but a much more useful skill) to look at serious approaches to issues and analyze their arguments and evidence.
–It suggested that creating an elaborate lie is much more creative and engaging than historical research, which is boringly confined by facts

On the whole, I have to agree. You can be creative with history and invent events and people using historical information and learn a lot about history in the process. You can use social networks to expand your audience for your scholarship. You can learn how to be skeptical of hoaxes and appropriately critical of secondary sources. And you can do all that without concocting an elaborate “gotcha” in which the mechanisms of creative mendacity take center stage over doing history or critical thinking.

But Anne-Marie says it better than I could.

I just don’t see where the information literacy skills here translate into what most students need in their real work with online information sources. Increasingly, I just think that a focus on deliberate hoaxes isn’t a very good way to teach students how to evaluate information.

Now I get that the work done to create the hoax might give the students in this class a greater appreciation for stuff that could make them more information literate, and that knowing specifically what they did to create a fake site might give them some stuff to look for in other sites, but I don’t really see the larger benefit here beyond the reminder that stuff on the Internet can be fake and I honestly don’t think that our students don’t know that full well already.

Because here’s the first thing - helping students learn that there is stuff on the wild, wild web that was put there just to trick them, to punk them or to prank them - well, there’s not a lot of value in that. . . . Most people who put fake or wrong or misleading information out there on the Internet have an agenda beyond April Fool’s - they’re trying to do more than trick us and what our students need is help identifying those agendas. They need help identifying the information that isn’t flat out lies, but that is a particular kind of truth.

At its heart, I think information literacy is inherently linked to inquiry, and discovery. It’s about the ability to learn from information - not just to find the sources worth learning from but to use that new information to change the way you understand things, and change the way you approach the next question.

And yes, I get that she’s pretend, but the fictional process the real class came up with does suggest that historical research is difficult and tedious and one doesn’t make the great discovery by engaging with sources in an open-minded way. If the class had been engaged in a discovery-based research process I would hope that that would have come through in their fictional avatar’s narrative. It doesn’t. There is no doubt that this group of students were truly engaged - playing with history, creating a new world and the characters to fill it. . . .

If the skills they were learning were about creativity and world-building it seems like the resulting project could have taken the form of an ARG or a similar project where those creative muscles could be flexed in the service of creating a world for the rest of us to play in, too.

And that’s probably what bothers me the most. It isn’t that a fictitious version of reality was invented. It isn’t just that the implication is that history, done the way historians do it, is boring and lacks creativity, though that does bug me. It was the way it was marketed and performed, as if the real object wasn’t to learn how to be skeptical or to create something historically plausible, but rather how to pull off a kind of performative sleight-of-hand that would fool the most people and gain the biggest gotcha.

It seems to me we get a constant barrage of social media self-promotion and manipulation through the media; learning how to add to it doesn’t seem the most direct way to understand its impact, any more than doing something many would consider unethical (deliberately creating a hoax) is the best hands-on way to explore ethics.

photo courtesy of magic74